


You Make Me Drop Things (The Hold Tight, It's Just Beginning Remix)

by significantowl



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Disabled Character, Fix-It, M/M, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-01
Updated: 2013-06-01
Packaged: 2017-12-13 15:58:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/826103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/significantowl/pseuds/significantowl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles doesn't count the small, sweet lines at the edges of Erik's mouth, nor the finer, lovelier ones at the corner of his eyes.  Nor does he count the sources from which they spring, the quick quirks of Erik's lips, the slow, spreading smiles which reach his eyes, or those tinged with worry or exasperation.  </p><p>Charles has an eidetic memory, but there are things he doesn't choose to count.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Make Me Drop Things (The Hold Tight, It's Just Beginning Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [luninosity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/gifts).
  * Inspired by [You Make Me Drop Things (Like All The Plans I Had Made For A Life Without You)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/683183) by [luninosity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity). 



> Happy remix, Luninosity! I hope you enjoy this. I adore your "You Make Me Drop Things (Like All The Plans I Had Made for a Life Without You" so much, and it was a joy to come back to it over and over while writing this.
> 
> Remix subtitle from "We Both Go Down Together," The Decemberists.

Charles has an eidetic memory. His mind is supremely well-suited to keeping a tally; in truth, it often does so without his consent. He blinks, and finds he knows precisely how many volumes of Greek history he owns, scattered among two libraries, his classroom, and his and Erik's bedroom. He wakes, and thinks of tea, and knows precisely how many more mornings it will be before his supply of Earl Grey is done.

And there it is, the rub, the reason Charles works against his own mind when it truly matters. A tally implies a threshold, a final mark scratched in ink, a pen laid down.

Charles doesn't count the small, sweet lines at the edges of Erik's mouth, nor the finer, lovelier ones at the corner of his eyes. Nor does he count the sources from which they spring, the quick quirks of Erik's lips, the slow, spreading smiles which reach his eyes, or those tinged with worry or exasperation. Charles cannot look at Erik and see anything like an ending.

On the morning when Charles' cup of tea comes with a ring on the side, on the morning when Charles says yes, Erik smiles so widely, so swiftly, that Charles is certain a new line is formed. Oh, he knows it's a fanciful notion, but it doesn't stop him from pressing measured kisses an inch from Erik's mouth, one either side, until Erik catches his face in his hands and deliberately claims Charles' lips.

A happy moment or two later, Charles is breathing into the crook of Erik's neck, nestled into one of his favorite spots on earth. Erik's every inhale and exhale reverberate against Charles' cheek, pressed to Erik's skin; he marks time by each tireless pulse of Erik's blood.

There’s something he cannot stop himself from saying. "You kept this very quiet," Charles murmurs. If there's a thread of wistfulness under the words, it's thinner than the one drawing tight around his thoughts, and more quickly snapped. It's gone in the first burst of Erik's warm, pleased pride.

"That was the idea," Erik says, pressing a kiss high on Charles' nose, and a second just below that. Twin kisses to twin imperfections well-loved by Erik; once, Charles could not have precisely marked their location without borrowing the view from another's mind. These days, he knows by heart.

And Charles knows Erik works hardest at the things that matter most, and catching no previous hint of this in his thoughts is, paradoxically, the greatest compliment of all. He knows that very well. But something can be both true, and beautiful, and momentarily difficult.

"When are we leaving, then?" Charles asks, because Erik's thoughts have taken a very specific turn: tall, cool trees, a soft breeze from a lake, and quiet for miles and miles around. Erik has been to this place, Charles can tell by the detailed hue of the light spilling across the deck, and the exact strength of the citrus-clean scent of polished wood just inside the cabin's front door. Erik has been there, and made it ready for Charles.

"Whenever you wish." One implication remains unvoiced - it's not as easy for Charles to be spontaneous as it once was, a simple fact that need not be discussed. Dry, teasing, but with an underlying seriousness, Erik continues, "I know how it would wound you if your students missed so much as an hour of their lessons."

Charles sits up straighter, subtly flexing his spine. Does he have a couple of hours' travel by car in him today? He believes he does. "Let me get them through their quiz this morning," Charles says, laying a kiss to Erik's jaw. "Then I'm all yours."

It's the perfect answer, and more than that, the perfect phrasing. Charles knows at once by the fierce, possessive satisfaction in Erik's mind, and the grin that splits his face. Charles has to press another pair of kisses to the corners of Erik's mouth before he can ready himself to teach that morning, and he’s terribly distracted all period long.

Towards the end of class, students still feverishly scribbling in their composition books, Charles gives the bare minimum of his attention to making certain no one is cheating - although really, with him in the room, they’d have to be mad to try it - and the rest to observing Erik as he packs with his usual economy. There’s a lightness in his eyes, a freeness, and Charles desperately wants to use lips and tongue to follow its trail, feel the tiny furrows and valleys in Erik’s skin.

His presence doesn’t go unnoticed. _You're going to give those children a wrinkle fetish,_ Erik thinks in his direction.

 _Worse things could happen to them_ , Charles sends back, whilst saying aloud, "Class dismissed."

If Charles were indeed counting, all previous records would be shattered on the drive up. Erik spends the hours with one hand on the wheel and another lightly cupping the nape of Charles’ neck, his arm stretched across the bench seat between them, an ever-shifting smile playing at his lips.

Charles does stiffen up as he rides, and Erik pulls into a convenience station just as he's beginning to contemplate the necessity of stretching his legs. He doubts he'd broadcasted the thought; Erik is incredibly good at reading the way Charles sits, the tension in his shoulders, the way he breathes. Erik waves the attendant away, and Charles takes a slow circuit of the car, one hand trailing along the metal, then leans against the wide fender to watch Erik pump his own fuel. 

When the job's done, Erik asks via a tilt of his head whether Charles would like to come inside with him while he pays. But Charles is content to stay in there in the sunlight at the base of a mountain, and he sends that as his reply: the warmth of the rays on his face, and the warmth there will be in watching Erik come walking back.

Erik smiles in acknowledgement, but briefly, close-mouthed, and there’s regret in the press of his lips.

Charles has stepped onto ground he hadn’t meant to tread, and he sighs, closing his eyes. Sometimes it’s hard not to, but he likes to think they’ve both become good at stepping away, at traveling that path only when the time is right. So Charles pulls his thoughts far away from salt in his mouth and the starkness of Erik's silhouette against tropical sand, and when Erik returns from the station with a bottle of Coca-Cola in each hand, Charles throws himself into enjoying first the effortless way Erik’s power flicks the caps off, then the shockingly cold rush of sweetness on his tongue.

Maybe too much, if Erik’s expression is anything to go by when Charles lowers the bottle.

“You’re horribly predictable,” Charles tells him. Erik seems pleased by this pronouncement, and even more pleased when Charles - all right, for his part he can be horribly shameless - licks his lips.

Erik's hand in the cabin is visible immediately upon their arrival. There are three short steps up to the deck, and a railing has been installed alongside, the wood bright and new. Standing with his hands braced on the open car door while his legs remember what it's like to be vertical, Charles takes in the house. It's low and snug, made of weathered wood and capped by a corrugated metal roof the same green as the trees above. Once he navigates the three stairs, the hardest part will be done; the cabin itself occupies just one floor.

He moves across the patch of earth with one hand lightly gripping Erik's elbow, switching to the railing when he reaches the steps. The support of Erik's body, the support of the work of his hands; these are Charles' to rely on, to cherish. And that of Erik's mind, whether he's teaching a class, arguing political strategy, or willing a perfect day into being. The support of Erik's heart.

The deck overhangs the water, a deep, narrow mountain lake, and the breeze is as gorgeous as Erik had led him to believe. There are no other houses in sight, just towering firs, pines, and hardwoods plunging down hillsides to its shores. Indeed, Charles has to stretch a good four or five miles to get so much as a whisper of another mind.

He draws back quickly. Just his mind, and just Erik's: that is most certainly the point.

"You're smiling," Erik says quietly. "May I assume that you like it, Charles?" He asks the question at Charles' ear, his chest pressed to Charles' back, and punctuates it by laying a hand over Charles' on the deck rail. A soft, bright _clink_ chimes into the mountain stillness; their rings, colliding.

 _You may,_ Charles thinks, swallowing past a lump in his throat. He turns in Erik's arms, looping his hands behind Erik's neck. "Get down here," he says, the huskiness in his voice suddenly something he wishes to gift to Erik, a match for the trace of dampness in the corners of Erik's eyes.

 _At your service._ Erik dips his head low enough for Charles to kiss anywhere he wishes. 

Charles has an eidetic memory. He knows with dizzying precision the moment his obsession began: blinking into consciousness in a hospital bed, meeting Erik's eyes, and watching Erik's sudden joy at seeing Charles awake break across his face, matched only by Charles' joy at seeing him there. Perhaps there had been a certain amount of self-preservation in his mind's choice to fixate on parts of Erik his helmet could not obscure. That metal shield had still been present as a ghost image for Charles then, shadowing Erik's face under the florescent lights.

Charles' memory does not allow for anything to soften, or fade, but he retains the power always to turn a page. Something can be true, and difficult, and lastingly beautiful.

The sun is shining, the breeze off the water is cool, and Erik is waiting. Charles gets to decide where to begin.


End file.
